Imagine - if you were typing a paper, and every fourth word a little man came up and tapped you on the shoulder, "pardon me sir, but you need to re-enter your password, then all will be well."

You comply, you stop in mid thought to listen to this guy, we'll call him Jeeves. You stop what you are doing to listen to Jeeves, and you decide to comply to his request, and you submit your password.

Now, back to what you were doing ... Where were you? Oh yes, your brain reconnects the severed synapses, and the thoughts begin to reform and flow from your finger tips...

And then, tap tap tap. It's Jeeves again.

I think that after the second time, most rational people would : 1. Lock the door, 2. Change locations, 3. Give Jeeves a piece of their mind, with instructions to not return... Yet we seem to tolerate this from these devices that are supposed to make life better, easier, faster.

Jeeves is ultimately accountable for his actions - he has to face you and answer for himself, and he understands that when you say, "if you interrupt me one more time, I am going to sew your fingers to your pants!" That you don't want to be disturbed.

An iPhone ... You can throw it, power it off, lock it in a soundproof box, but at the end of the day, the fact is that in a smartphone universe, WE are Jeeves. WE are the only ones accountable to ourselves, and if we fail to take action to expunge the rudely interrupting silicone ADHD device, we have only ourselves to blame. I am guilty as charged.

One day, I was pressed for time, but needed to get a pen-pal letter out. I decided to write it on the computer instead of the typewriter to save time. I got it written fairly quickly, then went to print it. First, my laptop would not find the printer on the network. I tried and tried to get it connected, then gave up and transferred my letter to a jump drive to print it from the desktop. It still wouldn't print. After several hours of fiddling, I finally got it fixed. My daughter had sent print jobs from her laptop and they got hung up somewhere in cyberspace, causing the printer to completely lose its mind. I had to cancel print jobs on 3 separate computers, restart the desktop and restart and reset the printer. On the typewriter, once I finished writing the letter it would have been done. The computer can be efficient, but it is not always!

Usually, Apple updates have installed fine for me and haven't created any problems. But sometimes there are unpleasant surprises, and they take hours to resolve. This time was the worst. The iOS update installed, but then nearly all of my apps became useless because they couldn't connect to the Internet (Facebook was the sole exception). I had to call Apple support. I worked with a very nice person, but it took a long time and several failed attempts before I could restore my phone.